nPro Building Atlas™: Building Data for Heat Network Planning

What is the nPro Building Atlas™?

The energy analysis of a district requires information about the existing buildings. This includes, for example, the building geometry, building height, building type, construction year and heated floor area.

Such information is often spread across different data sources, comes in different data formats, or first has to be linked together. The nPro Building Atlas brings suitable building data together, harmonizes it and makes it available in a uniform structure directly in nPro.

Three steps to your data basis

Data is retrieved directly in nPro – without detours via external GIS software, databases or format conversions.

1. Select the area: The study area is delineated on the map. All buildings within it are captured.
2. Retrieve the data: For each building, geometry, type, construction year, floor area and heat demand are taken from the Building Atlas and loaded into the project as a building list.
3. Review and adjust: All values can be inspected in the project and corrected, supplemented or replaced with your own survey and consumption data on a building-by-building basis.

A district with several hundred buildings can be set up in a matter of minutes – a data basis that used to take days of GIS work.

Which building data is included?

The nPro Building Atlas provides a structured and harmonized list of attributes for each building. Building type and building specification are classified according to the nPro software’s own taxonomy, so the data can be processed further without additional mapping steps.

Depending on the region, the available data basis and the individual building, not all attributes are available for every building. Missing information may have been derived – depending on the attribute concerned – from geometric relationships, statistical data or building typologies. The values provided can then be reviewed and adjusted individually within the project.

How reliable is the data?

Automatically provided building data is only an advantage if the heat demands calculated from it are reliable. We therefore compared the nPro Building Atlas with the official heat demand model of LANUV NRW across seven study areas – ranging from densely built-up city centres to scattered rural settlements. The mean absolute deviation of the total heat demand is 5.3 %, and in five of the seven areas it remains below 7 %. This is a solid basis for area-level balances, heat densities and the preliminary assessment of heat network areas; for individual buildings, reviewing the values remains advisable. All results, including the deviations, can be found on the page on the validation of the nPro Building Atlas.

Where does the data come from?

The nPro Building Atlas combines various public, official data sources. Depending on the region and data availability, these include in particular:

• official 3D building models and building coordinates of the German federal states,
• data from the building and housing census of the 2022 Census,
• building, address and geometry data from OpenStreetMap,
• regional or state-specific heat cadastres,
• other publicly available geodata and statistical data.

The data sources differ in terms of spatial resolution, survey date and the building attributes they contain, among other things. The data is therefore technically processed, standardized and – wherever possible – merged at building level before use.

Typical applications

The nPro Building Atlas is particularly useful in the early project phase, when a uniform data basis is needed quickly for larger areas.

• Creating district and building models
• Estimating the heat demand of buildings
• Feasibility studies and transformation plans for heat networks
• Investigating potential heat network areas
• Comparing centralized and decentralized supply solutions

How do I get access to the Building Atlas?

The nPro Building Atlas is part of the nPro Plus license. It is therefore available to all Plus users at no additional cost: building data is retrieved directly in nPro and is immediately ready for further project work.

Usage is offered as a flat rate – building data can be retrieved for any number of areas, with no limit on the number of projects or buildings. This assumes normal project use as part of planning work; systematic bulk retrieval of data outside of specific projects is not permitted.

Sample datasets

You can download a sample dataset for each federal state:

How is the building data determined?

For each attribute, the most suitable available data source is used. If a value is not directly available, it can be derived from other building properties.

Licenses and data versions

The building data is based on a combination of several official and open data sources (varying by federal state). These are merged and harmonized into a uniform data model to ensure a consistent and reliable data basis.

Notes on data accuracy and suitability

The values provided – particularly the heat demands – are based on available official and open data sources as well as methodological processing and harmonization. Coverage, timeliness and level of detail may vary by region. The data is intended as a basis for planning and analysis and does not replace an on-site building-level survey. nPro gives no warranty as to the accuracy, completeness or suitability of the data for any particular purpose. Users should review the data critically and supplement it with their own surveys where necessary.